Word order
| From: | Tim May <butsuri@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, August 6, 2002, 20:28 |
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I'm trying to figure out how word order should go in LC-01.
At present, it's basically SOV, with postpositions. It also has a
general principle that modifier follows modified (suffixation,
head-first compounds). But this seems to be a fairly unusual
situation. LC-01 doesn't have adjectives (as distinct from verbs) but
if it did, they'd follow the noun. The only SOV language in Campbell
where the adjective regularly follows the noun is Tibetan (which has
both head first and head last compounds).
So, why is this the case? I've heard people talking about
left-branching and right-branching languages, but I don't really
understand the theoretical interpretation of this.
I don't mind my language including some exotic features, but I don't
really want it to go against any strang trends in human language.
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